TravelZoo Review

www.travelzoo.com

Overall 4.40 of 5 view all 10 reviews

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Publisher's Circle

mrkstvns
Austin, TX

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Spot Good Travel Deals with TravelZoo

budget-conscious traveler, info junkie, love to travel, internet savvy

Pros

Top 20 list, Newsflash

Cons

Too many fake deals, Too many Orbitz/Travelocity promos

MAY

2008

I've been a TravelZoo subscriber pretty much since the site came online. I like it because it's clean, simple, and not overburdened by too much junk. Most of the deals really are genuine deals --- not just hype. The web site is clean and easy to use, and the deal news is usually timely enough that if you act fast, you have a fair shot of actually getting in on the deals.

The downside is that, in order to keep things straightforward and simple, some decisions were made that make the site inflexible and hard to use if you travel anywhere that's not a "popular" destination. In the hotel area, it's easy to spot the deals for Florida, but if you'd really rather head to Arkansas, you'll have trouble finding what you want --- if it ever does appear.

The quality of the deals has also gone downhill quite a bit over the past year and a half. Today, there's far too much noise with fake deals from Orbitz or Travelocity, and fewer GENUINE deals offered directly by the hotels and airlines. The trend is towards more and more junk links and elusive generic "fare sales" from Orbitz. There's still some real deals from real providers, but not as many as when TravelZoo was a better, tighter ship.

TravelZoo is still a pretty decent site and I still like getting their emails. The deals aren't as good as they used to be, and there's more chaff to wade through to find the nuggets of wheat, but compared to many of the travel web sites on the net these days, TravelZoo is still one of the more dependable sources of news about good travel deals.